Nvidia delivered strong second-quarter earnings on Wednesday — but that wasn’t enough to satiate the sky-high expectations of some on Wall Street.
The company’s stock, which is known to fluctuate significantly in the wake of its earnings, was down more than 5% in after-hours trading after the company failed to meet the highest of analysts’ expectations for Q3 revenue guidance.
But the company demonstrated that AI spending is still going strong.
The chipmaker notched $30.04 billion in revenue for the past quarter, outpacing consensus estimates of $28.86 billion. However, it was a slimmer revenue beat than recent quarters.
The company also beat estimates for guidance, reporting it expects about $32.5 billion in Q3 revenue, compared to average estimates of $31.77 billion.
However, that Q3 revenue forecast failed to meet some of the loftiest expectations for the third quarter, or the Wall Street “whisper number” that some analysts hoped the company would hit. Dan Morgan, an investor at Synovus, said the Wall Street whisper number was $33 billion to $34 billion.
Anticipation has been high for Nvidia’s earnings, as the firm has essentially become a bellwether for the wider AI industry.
The big question on everyone’s mind was the status of the much-anticipated Blackwell chips, the next generation after the Hopper GPUs that tech companies have been clamoring to get their hands on. Recent reports of a potential delay in Blackwell’s rollout drew concerns over the possible industry impact.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Blackwell demand was “incredible” and the company said it expected to ship “several billion” in revenue from sales of the new chip architecture in Q4. But it also acknowledged that production problems related to Blackwell impacted gross margins in the past quarter.
“We shipped customer samples of our Blackwell architecture in the second quarter,” Nvidia’s CFO said in prepared remarks.
“We executed a change to the Blackwell GPU mask to improve production yield,” she added. “Blackwell production ramp is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter and continue into fiscal 2026.”
Huang said demand continued to be “really strong” for Nvidia’s existing Hopper chips, and that AI companies were looking to deploy their capital and build out their data centers now with what was currently available.
While fielding questions from analysts, Nvidia’s CEO said that the company is seeing the “momentum of generative AI accelerating.”
Jessica Roberts is a seasoned business writer who deciphers the intricacies of the corporate world. With a focus on finance and entrepreneurship, she provides readers with valuable insights into market trends, startup innovations, and economic developments.
